Originally Posted by sggoodri
Therefore, I predict as Cary grows in population (currently about 110,000 - has doubled every 10 years) the priority given to increasing the pavement space on narrow two-lane state roads will greatly increase, while at the same time political pressure will mount to ban cyclists from these narrow two-lane roads.
The original post dealt with an increase in the percentage of people cycling, everyone seems to have forgotten that. As the percentage of people cycling increases, the percentage of people driving decreases. That makes it harder to ban cyclists from a road, not easier, because no politician wants to throw away a large and growing block of voters. When elections are won and lost by less then 2% margins, would any politician want to throw away a block of voters larger then that in size?
However there are two numbers we need to concern ourselves with, the percentage of people cycling rather then driving, and the percentage of trips being made by bicycle rather then by car. Politicians are concerned with the first number, because if a politician is pro-car, and you are a cyclist, you are less unlikely to vote for that politician, all other factors being equal.
Most elections, are decided on margins of less then 1%, which means, as far as politicians are concerned, the tipping point is around 2%, in that no politician want's to throw away votes, of a group larger then the margin they are winning by. Also, a large portion of transportational cyclists, are also environmentalists, and environmentalists, have proven to be very vocal, and have been getting a lot of press lately.
This thread is really more concerned with the second number, the percentage of trips, made by bicycle, rather then by car. This is also where we can expect the most growth, in that most cyclists, myself included, make some trips by car, and some by bicycle. This is also where traffic is generated, the more trips, the more traffic.
Here, the big issue is the looming spectre of peak oil, estimates are this will occur sometime between 2005 and 2035. Production of oil will plateau at the beginning, so it could take as many as 5 years, before we realise that we reached the peak, this is why the 2005 figure is still valid. Once the powers that be, realise we reached the peak, then expect oil prices to go up, as prices go up, the percentage of trips made by other means, cycling, transit, walking increase, the percentage of trips made by automobile decrease. Now while we are not really concerned with peds and transit, for the purposes of this thread, as their trips go up, they do affect the percentage of people driving. This ignores the fact that, when you can't just jump in the car to go somewhere, many trips will also not be taken at all.